Cannabis seeds and clones sharing organization story

They're lean, they're green, and they're changing the scene.
The Snohomish County Cannabis Creators - A Hotbed of Cannabis Consciousness

Western Washington has long been a hotbed of cannabis consciousness, and since the late seventies has been developing a pervasive hidden culture of indoor cannabis cultivators, marijuana seeds breeders, connoisseurs and consumers.
Average quality steadily increased throughout the eighties, in some cases to the point of disbelief. Large indoor commercial farms thrived, exporting Washington grown buds and cannabis seeds all over the country, much as is now happening in Vancouver.
America's war on drugs had been chugging along the whole time, gaining steam for ten years and imprisoning a lot of people, yet it had not really put a dent in the supply of any kind of mind expanding substances. Law enforcement agencies were under obvious political pressure to get results, or at least headlines, and so in 1989 they undertook "Operation Green Merchant."

This nationwide police action resulted in dozens of garden supply stores and hundreds of growers across the country being busted, all in one day. Many local growers managed to slip by undetected, but were cut off from familiar sources of grow supplies, or else scared into early retirement. By the beginning of 1990 commercial supplies had dried up, cannabis seeds genetics were lost and the overall scene became quite bleak. Washington's cannabis consumers had become accustomed to a very high standard of commercial product, and suddenly were left to fend for themselves.
During the early 90's, a whole generation of hempsters empowered themselves with knowledge, truth, the best of available cannabis seeds, and for the first time began heeding the call to action of pioneers like Jack Herer. A small group of us had already decided that the only way to get back our favorite plant and pastime would have to be by doing it ourselves. We managed to get our hands on some good marijuana seeds and formed a loose partnership to produce the much needed herb.

Hard Lessons & a Good Idea

Things went well for us for about a year, until one founding member had to learn some hard lessons about prohibition. Within three months thieves struck at two different locations, and both burglaries resulted in police busts.
By luck, and probably to some extent because of the way that the cops stumbled onto both situations, the two cases went to State Court. Unlike the US Federal Court, there are no mandatory minimums in State Court, and Washington state has some of the most lenient pot laws in the country. With the help of a good lawyer one case was dropped in exchange for a guilty plea in the other.
The final sentence was twenty-six days in the local clink, a year's worth of urine tests and about $2500 fines and fees. A walk in the park compared to the mandatory 10-15 years the cultivator would have faced in federal court. Yet twenty-six days is twenty-six days, and it was during this time that the idea for a growers' co-op and virtual cannabis preserve was conceived. It was named the Snohomish County Cannabis Creators (SCCC), with a nod to the now defunct Super Sativa Seed Club.
The founding purpose of the SCCC was to create as much of the highest quality cannabis as is physically possible. This time, everyone was invited to help and share cannabis seeds and marijuana clones.
The SCCC has grown side by side with the explosion of hemp consciousness, more than doubling every year in both members and production of buds and cannabis seeds to share. The SCCC actively supports the hemp movement by teaching and spreading hemp information, and by donating herb free of charge directly to people with a doctor's recommendation. The SCCC has also been a primary sponsor of the awesome Seattle Hempfest since 1993.

World Class DNA

The SCCC has been actively searching out Washington's finest clones and marijuana seeds for six years now, and currently maintains a very dynamic line-up of world class cannabis DNA. To make it into the SCCC, a potential contender plant must compete with the existing strains in potency, smell, flavour, flowering period, and yield. If it cannot compete in most of these areas it must have some extremely unusual characteristic that gives it redeeming value.
All of our strains were obtained as clones except "The Pez" (Northern lights), which was the made-in-the-stars result of one thoughtful individual saving a single cannabis seed from a bag of supreme quality near-sensimilla.
Classic pure sativas are conspicuously absent from our high-potency line up. We certainly recognize that some sativas can be superior in many ways, and it is a main priority to grow the highest quality buds possible, yet in the real world, especially these days, it also makes sense that more bud is better, and will bring more healing and more enlightenment. Since indoor space is limited, the vast majority of what we grow are pure indicas and mostly indicas, from finest self breeded cannabis seeds, simply because they yield more buds in less time. In a prohibition state, this is a matter of simplification for the cultivator, many of whom are amateurs.
So the idea of a cannabis creators' co-op and virtual cannabis preserve five years ago has resulted in established standards of quality which span an unknowable geography. SCCC members routinely smoke herb grown by someone they've never met at someplace they've never seen, that is very consistent with the quality standards that they are familiar with and have come to expect.
By giving clone strains and SCCC marijuana seeds varieties individual names, they are personified and earn a reputation. The SCCC's rule for sharing clones or marijuana seeds is "free to a good home", so all regular consumers of SCCC product know that they have access to the all-important high quality genetics, if they should ever decide that they want them. In this way, career smokers who aren't growers soon develop a desire to grow, as they begin to associate the finished product traveling down the chain from the more experienced members with something they could actually grow for themselves.

Good luck with growing and always a happy high to all cannabis growers!